Why private varsities don’t benefit from TETFund – Bogoro

Prof Suleiman Elias Bogoro is the Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund). In this interview, he speaks on the reasons private universities are not benefitting from the agency’s intervention projects and how political interference in some institutions is affecting fund accessibility. Private institutions are not included in the list of TETFund beneficiaries. Why is […]

Prof Suleiman Elias Bogoro is the Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund). In this interview, he speaks on the reasons private universities are not benefitting from the agency’s intervention projects and how political interference in some institutions is affecting fund accessibility.
Private institutions are not included in the list of TETFund beneficiaries. Why is this so?
It’s being a debate ongoing for quite some time. But let me take advantage of this moment to say clearly and unambiguously that government, in its wisdom, decided to apply TETFund money to only public institutions. There is historical evidence for that wisdom. Nowhere in the world has government subsidised the private sectors, it only provides enabling environment for them to thrive, and education institution cannot be an exception. And in our own case, there are clear peculiarities. Government made it clear that the fund has to be for public tertiary institutions. All governments target largest number of persons for intervention in development. Beyond that, government goes to the narrower premise of prioritising intervention for children of the less privileged. Even in contemporary democracy and politics, this is a fact that you cannot deny.
Also, there is no doubt about the statistics of private-public institutions in this country. Presently, we have 45 private universities in Nigeria and about 80 public universities. The entire students’ population of all private universities is between 70,000 and 80,000. You take only two public universities and you have that number. That is, two public universities have the population of all the 45 private universities. You can see why government says our intervention projects should be on public tertiary institutions because that is where the majority of students study, particularly those from less privileged families.
Government is sensitive about addressing the challenges of the majority and the majority are the less privileged. I am using this opportunity to appeal for elevation of the two to four per cent tax money given to the fund; or a small component of the tax should be dedicated to research, so that private universities will be included.
The Plateau State University, Bokkos has not graduated any student since its inception 10 years ago partly due to lack of infrastructure and academic staff. Are TETFund intervention projects not extended to the institution or is it that the management of the school has not requested for any?
The challenges facing the school are not only limited to academic staff; politics has also crept in. Politics has influenced development of the university. The National Universities Commission (NUC) has been quite worried about the condition of the university and even threatened that it would withhold its recognition of the university if the management refuses to settle the political scores affecting the smooth running of the school.
Since I came to office, TETFund has made a number of interventions, though the school has not benefited high impact projects but from some special projects. Today, there are structures that have been approved and about to take off in that university. However, the political interference is really affecting the management in accessing TETFund intervention projects, and we are not comfortable if the story we are getting is political bickering rather than academic advancement. So, I want to believe that this is one of the reasons that might have stifled the university. It is also important to note that TETFund does not discriminate in terms of federal and state-owned institutions.
Initially, it was mainly the federal institutions that were benefitting. TETFund Board of Trustees corrected this and recently three quarters of TETFund projects are sited in state-owned universities, including polytechnics and colleges of education.
I want to say, without fear of contradiction, that there is no partisanship in the agency. In TETFund, we are partisan-blind. This means that we do not give assistance to an institution because it is being governed by party XYZ. If more of our intervention projects are sited in state-owned institutions that tells you that some people are not doing enough for an institution that they own.
What are the things you consider before starting a project in an institution?
All institutions benefit equally, there is no discrimination. Our law stipulates that there is equality in appropriation of our intervention in respect of special projects. The law also provides for discretionary application of intervention fund to address peculiarities in particular parts of the country, some of them around geo-political terrain although we have challenges in some regions. Some of the peculiarities even come into play in management and in our relating with benefitting institutions. The board of trustees that was recently dissolved had to vacate a number of approved projects some of them dating six to seven years ago. The approval was there but the institutions never accessed them for reason of administrative ineptitude. I believe there is no reason for not accessing fund because we have communicated to them. Some projects were approved in 2010, 2011 and 2012, and now we are in 2015. Some institutions have not been able to bring requests for approval in principle, the stage for the agency to approve, they are there bickering. For a long time, TETFund and UBEC money were lying unutilised and somebody thinks we have a way of taking pleasure in investing the money and getting whatever returns from it.  Although when invested, we keep the profit under non-statutory fund and the details are made available to our auditors.
Beside peculiarities, there are issues of implementation and accessing. Today, I’m happy in welcoming some heads of institutions in my office while I am not happy in welcoming others, because I know the records of their very slow habit of accessing fund. If an institution from a particular state is slow in accessing fund and in the next state they are fast, you will see projects springing up, physically manifesting.  And then somebody goes to say we are discriminating.
How much money was unutilised?
We had about N55 billion last year. We had to revoke some allocations that were unutilised for over four years. Some heads of institutions even came but there is nothing we could do, because the allocations have been revoked. Recently, after we reviewed the mechanism for our implementation, we had a meeting with heads of institutions and directors of physical planning of institutions where we agreed on modifying some of our templates. And after the modification, there were significant improvements in accessing our funds.
Are you saying that the previous templates were a bit difficult?
The templates were not overall difficult but schools were complaining of some areas, though we robustly defended those areas. TETFund is among the best public agencies in the country that protect public funds and that is why our interventions are manifesting and impactful. Our mechanism is so robust.